Naturally, I got up early (6AM) to watch the Grand Show on Bloomberg, starting with the ringing of the NYSE opening bell. (How would you like to be the guest who happened to get TODAY to ring that Opening Bell!)
It really is damn scary to watch the markets open down over 400 points. Wow.
Twenty minutes into trading I saw the markets immediately had strength and every instinct in my body told me to BUY the S&P500 long. But I didn’t have the guts to “walk into the fire.”
Then to see those buy trades from the market pro’s start coming in just as the market was down 400 points. Those are people with nerves of steel, just walking into that storm and start BUYING like mad even though the market was down 400 points. That really is damn impressive. That is real courage under fire.
I went with safety. I saw that gold showed strength even before the NYSE opened, just on that 3/4 point rate cut. So I moved 25% of my portfolio into gold today, only about 20 minutes after the NYSE opening bell. So far, gold continues to move up.
DID you see commodity exchanges were trading gold at $850 early this morning! I found myself thinking, “I WISH had a trading account in a metals exchange so I could buy at $850.”
One of the problems I had today is that several of my retirement accounts were FROZEN in ETRADE due to my having submitted to Fidelity the request those accounts be moved to Fidelity. Those are the last remaining accounts at ETRADE; the others have already moved to Fidelity. In one of those frozen ETRADE accounts I had that previous stupid purchase of $35,000 2X leveraged long position on the S&P500. YES, 2X leveraged and the market is moving in the opposite direction. Sucks. Talk about BAD TIMING. That was NOT a good feeling this morning knowing I was going to lose significant money on that stupid bet. As of now, I’m down $2500 on that bet overall.
I tried to sell all those short oil sector positions this morning when we were down 400 on the DOW. I was up 25% on those positions. It was time to sell. I clicked “SELL” and ETRADE replied, “Sorry, this account is FROZEN due to transfer of assets.”
Bastards
🙂
ETRADE is getting even with me for abandoning them in their darkest hour!
Hey, I found out yesterday you can order a Kg (32 oz) weight gold bar for $28,000, and have the post office deliver it to your door. I’m not sure I would trust my local mailman to safely deliver twenty-eight grand of gold!
